Diggers and Dozers Mark

To mark the recent National Pothole Day, the BBC Radio 4 show - You & Yours - decided to focus upon the emotive issue of potholes.   As part of that feature, they chose to focus upon the newly-introduced PotholePro machine from British construction equipment giant, JCB.

To provide some industry credibility to the show, You & Yours went in search of an expert guest.   When they couldn't find one of those, they called Diggers and Dozers instead.

At 1pm on Monday the 11th of January 2021, JCB declared war on poorly maintained roads with the official launch of the new PotholePro machine.

Just a few hours later, Diggers and Dozers convened a meeting of the War Cabinet, gathering together industry influencers and representatives from JCB’s Battle Command to discuss how the scourge of potholes might be defeated.

The show you’re about to hear is the audio highlights of that meeting.

The full show was originally broadcast as a LIVE video show that includes footage of the new JCB PotholePro machine in action.   You can see that video here:  https://youtu.be/oPiVvQccq18

At first glance, Caterpillar's decision to exhibit at next year's Consumer Electronics Show might seem at odds with the company's heavy iron and blue collar reputation.

But make no mistake - Caterpillar is an innovation giant; and it has thoroughly earned its place among the global technology elite.

According to  report in The Construction Index, JCB stands accused of human rights breaches because some of its machines were used in the demolition of Palestinian homes.

Such accusations are misplaced and out of touch with the realities of global construction equipment sales.   Furthermore, the pursuit of this case merely dilutes and distracts from the true cause facing Palestinian residents.

The Komatsu stand at the recent ConExpo exhibition in Las Vegas was one of the big draws of the show.

In particular, visitors were queuing to have their photo taken in the bucket of the massive WA800 wheel loader – one of the biggest machines at the show.

But just behind that machine, Komatsu had dedicated a large part of its stand to a theatre area in which it was talking about Intelligent Machine Controls and – more importantly – a concept that the company calls Smart Construction.

I was lucky enough to catch up with Komatsu’s Smart Construction Business Manager Chris Faulhaber to find out more.

And I started by asking him what Smart Construction actually is.

If we lived in a normal world, this episode would have been recorded at the swanky Quaglino's restaurant in London during a posh lunch.

Sadly, we find ourselves living in the COVID-19 world in which any sense of normality is but a distant memory; and in which posh lunches have given way to foraging for toilet paper.   So instead, I caught up with Chris Harvey - one of the founders of The Hire Exchange - to find out more about this unusual start-up company and its mission to marry those looking to sell equipment rental companies with those looking to buy them.

You can find out more about The Hire Exchange here.